


Flutter

by JelloJolteon



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien with the butterfly miraculous, Alternate Universe, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Greyling AU, Kwami Swap, Minor Character Death, much darker than canon, please note the -chose not to use archive warnings-: if I finish this there's a spoiler there
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-03-19 22:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18979321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JelloJolteon/pseuds/JelloJolteon
Summary: Flutter-(n.) (aerodynamics)a phenomenon in which a body moving through a fluid begins to oscillate, undamped: may lead to catastrophic failure.





	1. What We Lost

**Author's Note:**

> You've all been waiting for this for... how long? I'm done hoarding what I have and I can't promise this will ever be finished but... you know. Here it is.

          The bedroom is quiet, save for the low hum of the air conditioning and the occasional sound of a mouse scroll wheel. Adrien peers at the cold white of the webpage before him.

         

**_Emilie Agreste_ ** _(b. Emilie Claireau) was a French actress, activist, and philanthropist. Born to socialite parents Charles Claireau and Agnes Claireau, she spent much of her early life in the public eye. She is most famous for her starring role as Tara in the film_ Solitude _, which is celebrated as a modern French classic. Her disappearance while on a trip to Tibet was cause for a large scandal that implicated her fashion mogul husband Gabriel Agreste. The case remains unsolved owing to issues with international information sharing, lack of evidence, and a lack of public record on the nature of Emilie’s trip._

_Jump to Section_

_1.1_    _Early Life_

_1.2_    _Career_

_1.3_    _Marriage to Gabriel Agreste_

_1.4_    _Charity Work_

_2.1_    _Disappearance and Scandal_

_2.2_    _Memorial_

_3.1_    _See Also_

_3.2_    _References_

          Adrien’s mouse hovers over the “Disappearance” anchor momentarily before he clicks the link.

_Though Emilie was active in many charities and founded three of her own, little detail about the charity work that was to be undertaken in Tibet is known. Testimony from her husband claims that she had been involved in “[Promoting] education among Tibetan youths, particularly girls,”_ _ [27] _ _but no public record of this charity work or an organization it might’ve been linked with has surfaced. To this effect, Gabriel claimed that the work had been of a more “personal nature” and that even he had not been made privy to much of her itinerary._ _ [27] _

_Emilie’s chartered jet departed Charles De Gaulle airport at 8:04am local time on February 17_ _th_ _, 2015, according to air traffic control logs. No trouble of any kind had been reported to any of the towers along the flight path, but as the plane approached its destination, Shigatse Peace Airport, contact was lost. The plane did not successfully make it into range of RKZ’s tower, and several attempts at radio handshakes were made. By 22:36 GMT +8, the plane was declared missing._ _ [26] _

_The cause of the disappearance and presumed crash was hotly debated, but expert consensus suggests that low visibility may have caused the craft to veer off course, deviating from pre-determined safe routes for crossing the Tibetan Plateau. Snowy conditions would have quickly covered the plane, making any wreckage nearly impossible to spot. No avalanches were reported in the area surrounding the loss of communication._ _ [26][28] _

_An anonymous tip to the press suggested that there had been foul play, and that Gabriel Agreste had orchestrated his wife’s disappearance for financial gains._ _ [25] _ _Monsieur Agreste was ultimately found not guilty in his trial, though many conspiracies still surround the whole ordeal. Gabriel has attempted to sue the tabloids for libel and damages; this trial has yet to occur._ _ [25][27] _

 

          Adrien stares at the article subsection, his expression unreadable. He can’t quite fathom why he’d expect Wikipedia to update with news on his mother first. If he knew better, he’d stop coming back to his mother’s page in general, rife as it had been with false information and wild accusations. Instead, he chose to hope against hope that his mother was still out there and that someday, _someday_ , he’d get to see all of the past tense references to her changed back to present. Maybe he’d get the honor of doing it himself.

          By this point, though, he feels numb. Really, there’s not that much to it: he’d let out his tears over his mother some time ago, and learned to keep the ones over his father to himself. It wasn’t that bad. He could always use those private accounts of his to shout into the void. It was lonely, he knew, but it was fine. It could be worse. The void that had opened in his heart, he reasoned, could be boarded over for now.

          Adrien sighs, closes the page, and, raking a hand through his golden hair, returns to a paused anime. If he couldn’t fill the void, he could at least step around it. Though the sound of Japanese and silly sound effects filled the room, the quiet seemed to lurk underneath, perhaps even more insistent than before.

 

* * *

 

          Gabriel Agreste stands on the tarmac with his wife, in the back of his mind noting with disdain that his shoes were falling victim to the saltwater that slicked the pavement. The bitter, slushy pre-dawn had a sort of serenity to it, even as erratic winds bit at his face. None of this was extraordinary; every few months Emilie would have another grandiose notion that she needed to be helping _elsewhere_ , and over the years Gabriel had learned to run with it. It did, after all, come with the passion he’d fallen in love with her for twenty years prior.

          She stood between him and the jet, a humble roller suitcase at her side, and opened her arms to bid him farewell.

          “I may not have service once I’m far past the airport, but I’ll call you when I get in.”

          “Please see that you do; you know how Adrien gets,” his words coming out with a softness reserved for few.

          Emilie smiles that blinding smile of hers, and gives her husband a quick peck on the lips.

          “I know,” she says, and she turns back to gather her suitcase and head toward the plane.

          The snow, which had been falling in light flakes, now begins to howl around him. Emilie turns back over her shoulder, suddenly nearly invisible in the blizzard, and shouts something Gabriel can’t understand.

          He _should_ understand, he realizes, and begins to panic. The snow whirls around him and he can’t see a meter in front of him. He looks down to the pavement below him, frantic, and finds that the brine water has morphed into glassy hands.

          There’s muffled shouting and flashbulbs as the hands solidify and attempt to pull him into the pavement. The pavement becomes inky and the hands continue to drag him under, the shouting growing ever louder. The darkness swallows him up to his torso, his chest, his neck—

          Gabriel awakens, gasping and drenched in a cold sweat. He’s dizzy, and attempts to sit up while pulling his knees toward his chest and his head into his hands.

          His slowing breathing and the sudden rustling of sheets are the only sounds in the room. He forces his heavy breathing into a more calm and restrained tempo, the action nearly reflexive. The nightmares were no longer novel. He looks to his left in the king-sized bed and remembers that when he woke up, the real nightmare began. He squints past the empty bed, toward the angry red numbers of the digital alarm clock. 4:47. He puts his head back into his hands to rub his eyes. No more sleep tonight.

          Gabriel slides out of bed, dons his slippers, takes his glasses from his nightstand, and grabs his robe while he heads toward the bathroom. The light from the mirror blinds him when he flicks the switch, and he takes a moment to let his reflection come into focus. He is greeted by the sight of mussed hair, tired eyes, and far more stubble than he cared to keep. _Maybe it was just as well I woke up early_ , he thinks cynically, _this mess is going to take some time to fix._

Unfortunately for him, there is nothing to keep his mind occupied by this point except his nightmare. He’s had this one before; it starts out like the memory, but as the dream progresses it quickly takes a turn for the worse. He can’t help but be caught off guard every time, and at the thought, he grips his toothbrush a bit more insistently. He should be _better_ than this by now, it’s been four months. He’s had that nightmare almost weekly.

          As he brushes his hair back into its predestined style, he notices and plucks out more than one white hair. His hair was light enough that it shouldn’t’ve mattered, but the media would swallow him whole at any chance they’d get. He’d known that for decades, now, but had been forced to again learn how cruel people could truly be for a juicy story.

          He sets the brush down and grips at the granite countertop of the sink, his knuckles turning white. His cold fury was thawing.

          _It wasn’t his fault_.

          Gabriel glowers at his reflection, as though he could blame it for his misfortune instead. He’d lost his wife. He’d poured thousands upon thousands into the investigation. Every lead was cold and they’d told him two weeks ago to, _“Listen, Monsieur Agreste, at this point there’s not much we can do. There’s not much… there’s so little to suggest she’s even_ alive _out there…”_

He was stunned. After the _hell_ he’d been through to find her, _the whole while_ the media wanted to eat him alive, and they’d had the gall to tell him there was nothing. He’d had half a mind to go out there to Tibet himself for a good two days afterward.

          That no-good competitor of his, Michael Lesaq. ‘Anonymous tip’, his ass.

 

* * *

 

        Gabriel awakened, after four days of a loud public outpouring of support for him and his missing wife, to find the wolves had been turned loose on him. Nathalie had burst into his room, swinging open his balcony doors to blinding light and riotous shouting. Even from such a distance, he could hear the violent clicking of flashbulbs.

          “It would seem your castle was built on pillars of sand, Mister Agreste.”

          She strode back to him and shoved the day’s edition of _Le Tour_ under his face, and as it were, even the more reputable of papers had decided to believe the whisperings of a shadow. On the front page:

MADAME AGRESTE MISSING; GABRIEL AGRESTE TO BLAME?

          The paper had crumpled in his hands before he’d even finished the first paragraph. Truth be damned, they were out to take everything he had from him.

          “Does Adrien know?”

          “No, sir, he’s still asleep.”

          “Break it to him gently, please.”

          “Yes, sir.”

 

* * *

 

          Gabriel sighs and relaxes his grip on the counter, still seething. Instead, he opts to take off his glasses and run the water.

          Fashion was not a place to expect camaraderie, and everyone broke at some point under the heat of the spotlights. You might have one or two fast friends, but you could expect the remaining dozens to sell you out in a heartbeat behind a hand while trading pleasantries to you up front. Gabriel had no taste for this petty behavior, and his blunt rejection of their little game had garnered him just as many enemies as if he’d slid in with them. For a good while, he’d been flattered by their ire because he knew it meant he was winning. He was beating them at a game he didn’t even want to play.

          He should’ve known they’d start cheating someday.

          Michael Lesaq had made it clear he’d never liked Gabriel. He’d had humble beginnings in Brittany and had always painted himself as the underdog, a victim of rural birth. To Gabriel, this had always translated as a reason to be pretentious and ask for handouts, but most of the other designers in Paris had decided that the best way to pacify him was to stroke his ego. He’d been willing to let lay at that, but when Lesaq one day showed up at one of Gabriel’s shows to call him out as a “selfish leech succeeding on mere social status alone,” he’d decided he’d had enough.

          Gabriel had been young and stupid and temperamental. He couldn’t stand the thought of Lesaq using him as a springboard into bottom-feeding tabloids. He shouldn’t have given Lesaq the delight of a reaction, and presently scrubs at his face harder in the water as if to wash away one of his biggest mistakes. He should have done nothing.

          Instead, Lesaq met the full force of Gabriel’s cold fury. Gabriel answered when asked about Lesaq in interviews and spoke honestly and without restraint. Lesaq reacted violently, perhaps knowing what Gabriel had said was true, and had thus taken every opportunity to make Gabriel’s life as miserable as he could. Such was the fashion industry.

          Gabriel rinses his face and remembers how quickly Lesaq crossed the unspoken line about speaking ill of Gabriel’s family, as well. He’d made many sleazy advances on Emilie, and more that Gabriel had probably not been privy to. When she was pregnant he’d immediately dropped interest in her, calling her Gabriel’s “fat milking cow” and when Adrien was born, accused him, _a newborn_ , of being “damned into privilege, blind to the world”. Gabriel could ignore most of it by that point, despite the cruelty of it all, because there was no other way to win against a man like Lesaq. He’d learned this after the first few years of having the man be his personal thorn in his side.

          But oh, how the man jumped at the chance when he heard Emilie had gone missing.

          To be sure, _all_ of the industry had been a-twitter, but most everyone came forward to express sugarcoated condolences and “heartfelt” wishes for her safe return. Their primary concern was foremost Emilie, second Adrien, and then only possibly Gabriel. Publicly, Lesaq had refrained from comment.

          The next day an anonymous tip to the tabloids, mere conspiracy at best, arrived. Gabriel’s world went up in flames. Accusations were flung. His profit margins plummeted faster than he’d ever seen. After that, the investigators had been wary and the seed of doubt had been sown. He was being run ragged by protocol and business projections and trying to convince the world that his unflinching persona had not wavered.

          Gabriel Agreste was rotting on the inside.

          He finishes toweling off his face and finds his eyes redder than he wanted them to be. In a fit of emotion, he slaps his towel at the mirror, leaving wet streaks on the otherwise pristine reflection.

          He shouldn’t have let her go.

 

* * *

          Harsh midday light streams through the office space at Gabriel. The patches of sun war with the air conditioning on the fifth floor where Adrien wanders.

          The fifth floor was, once upon a time, Adrien’s favorite. It was the “creativity floor” and while there were still office spaces, the larger side rooms and closets had been devoted to fabric and sewing and anything that could be vaguely related to the making of fashion. A lounge with plush leather chairs and a potted palm occupied an all-glass corner that looked onto the streets of downtown Paris. It was chic but not unwelcoming, and Adrien instinctively headed that way.

He couldn’t count the number of times Mom had brought him up here. When he was very young, he’d been cooed and fawned over by most of the employees. As he grew older, he’d come in on his own and say hello to a few of the workers before going to sit on the chair looking out onto the street corner and play video games.

          Compared to just a year ago, the office space was dead, even considering it was a weekend. Gabriel’s employees prided themselves on hard work and many had come in after hours to prove their devotion in times prior. But now? Adrien could only hear the sounds of one keyboard and one sewing machine. It hadn’t been a matter of devotion. It was a matter of who Gabriel could financially bear to keep.

          Adrien watched the fallout firsthand. When Mom disappeared, he first expected no reflection on the business. Father had been tense and when Adrien had happened to pass through the office one day between the disappearance and the accusation, there was a quiet sorrow that permeated the space. Two days later, the mood was tense. Shares had immediately plummeted. Father’s team of economists had been running around feverishly, quietly and urgently chatting on the phone and carrying stacks of paper far too large to be good. The legal team that usually occupied the third floor was stretched thin, two lone employees left to man a chorus of telephones while the others had been deployed to do external damage control.

          The designers were tense, and morale among everyone was low. They were going to get laid off unless they could fashion a miracle from bolts of cloth and spools of thread.

Adrien had over the years learned who to like among his father’s team: Marie was cheery and youthful and snuck Adrien sweets. Emmanuel ruffled his hair and asked how his day had been and always seemed to care about the answer. Thea was basically a third grandparent and her best friend Mathilde a fourth. They liked to tease but always let him hide around their desks. Conspiratorial was a good word to use for them.

          The day the news ran the story, Emmanuel, who had always been there when Adrien came in, was absent. Marie was crying at her desk. Thea had retired two years prior but Mathilde gave Adrien a sad, tight smile, and said, “It looks like this one might be a little harder for me to ride out, dear.” The remainder of Adrien’s List of Favorite Employees were quiet and terse.

          As the weeks dragged on and profits continued to tumble lower, they found they had every right to be. A handful of the employees walked out willingly. Two months had gone by. Marie was gone only a week and a half now, her desk space empty and gathering little dust. Mathilde had decided to retire, her notice freshly in. The remaining designers had thrown themselves into a fervor of productivity so as not to garner a place on Gabriel’s Hotlist. Even the good ones were forced to compete out of fear for their careers. Nobody had time for Adrien on the few occasions he’d been allowed to stop in. The silence was deafening.

          Adrien arrives at his preferred chair and hears the sewing machine make an uncomfortable _clunk_ , a low, hissed swear following. He pauses and, after a moment of only keys clicking, turns around and walks out the way he’d come. An uncomfortable pressure had begun to build behind his eyes. This wasn’t the office Adrien grew up in.

          This wasn’t how things were supposed to turn out.


	2. The Birth of a Scourge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel Agreste finds something interesting in the midst of a wave of grief.
> 
> **WARNING: Minor character death.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Character death already? Yeah sorry it's... a defining moment. This story is pretty dark at times, I'll have to go back and update the tags probably.

Gabriel doesn’t end up getting very far when he leaves the bathroom at five in the morning, instead having stalked back to his bed. He sits down on the edge of his wife’s side.

“Emilie, what are we going to do without you?”

Silence.

“I’ve done everything I possibly could for you… and yet it hasn’t been enough.”

          “You’ve not come back… why hasn’t it been enough?”

          “What did I do to deserve life without you?”

He can feel the guilt wrap around his heart and ceases talking, staring ahead at the wall and allowing the pain to flow through him. It courses through his veins and he can feel himself tense, awash with grief. He closes his eyes and lets out a long sigh to steady his nerves. There _had_ to be something else for him to try, if only he could just figure out what it was. She couldn’t be gone. She was out there. He could feel her. He could _reach_ her if he just stretched far enough, everything else be damned.

Not for the first time, he wished none of this had ever happened. He’d never considered himself much for fairy tales or religion, but he could dream. On the bad days, the ones where he’d lay awake at night and then sit with disdain as a hired makeup artist dotted concealer on the hefty bags under his eyes, he’d wish more than anything in the world she was back. A few times he’d gotten away from himself and almost felt a giddy excitement to go home at the end of his day, only to be crushed with disappointment at the realization that there was no sign of Emilie.

His mind wandered to his son, whose blond mop was so similar that at times Gabriel felt as though he’d seen a ghost.

Adrien…

Gabriel hadn’t meant for things to happen the way they’d had. Adrien had always taken more after his mother: his charitability, his sunshine attitude, his injustices over things that weren’t fair, and especially when those things had been rigged in his favor against others. Gabriel couldn’t bear the sight of his son some days and others was only left to wish that the tabloids wouldn’t try to sniff him out and tear away the last good thing Gabriel had in his life. Gabriel had gotten so caught up in work and maintaining as pristine of a public rapport as possible that he’d had no time left for Adrien. The guilt gnawed at him and he told himself that when this was all over, they’d go on a much needed vacation together. Maybe they could go to America and see New York; Adrien had been young when they’d last gone. He’d probably appreciate it now. Maybe Gabriel could find some peace of mind in flying as far away from Tibet as possible.

          He wished he knew when that day would come. He was miserable, tired, and tired of being miserable. Every day had been a struggle. It was hard to get out of bed. It was hard to eat. It was hard to maintain a straight face for twelve hours of the day under hawklike public scrutiny, and it was hard to go to sleep knowing that nightmares were likely to follow.

Something had to change or he was going to lose his mind.

Gabriel goes about his day, feeling like a man shoveling still-hot ashes from a demolished lot. He checks his email, with its dozens upon dozens of new requests for contact, scanning through against the odds for any leads on the case. None come through. The rest he considers Nathalie’s problem, though she won’t be getting in till seven.

When she does arrive, an enormous thermos of coffee in her slim hands, she sets about briefing him on today’s itinerary. Meetings, meetings, meetings; none of them important. He was still filtering through the backlog of business, months later.

Gabriel is thus forced to summon the willpower to leave the house and the chauffeur to take him to the office, and the drudgery of it only serves to cement his sour mood. When he returns home in the evening, the cooks have orchestrated him a fine meal, Nathalie idly updating him on Adrien’s progress with his tutors as he picks at the foie gras. Adrien himself has apparently decided to turn in early.

“Is he ill?”

“Not to my knowledge, sir. He did have fencing today as you’d know if you’d been listening to me, and he mentioned something about blustres being the focus today, citing that as the reason for his tiredness.”

“Very well.”

“Sir, when is the last time you talked to him yourself?” Nathalie’s voice changes from its normal monotone to one she used specifically to ask Gabriel the dangerously personal questions nobody else dared.

Gabriel fixes her with a hard stare as though the question sounds ridiculous, but the longer she returns the same look, the more he realizes that it is, in fact, a very good one. His face softens.

“Remind me to talk to him tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.”

He looks at his plate once more before shoving himself up from the table and exiting the dining room past Nathalie. She relaxes her stiff posture unknowingly and goes to gather her things and finish for the day, setting a reminder on her tablet on the way out.

Gabriel finds himself in his office, gazing at the replica Klimt on the wall behind his desk. The pristine marble of the room makes his footsteps echo as he approaches it. He touches a hand to it softly, before swinging the edge of the painting to the side to reveal a safe. He keys in the code and hauls it open to reveal its scant contents. He’s greeted immediately by the picture of his wife, the book on Tibet he’d scrawled notes in alongside her earlier ones, and her beloved peacock brooch. Also included is the thick tome of hers that she demanded he keep in the safe many years ago; he’s touched it only a handful of times, as the strange garb had been interesting but the code it was written in the ultimate hindrance to learning more. There’s folders a shelf lower: itineraries, a copy of the case file, bills pertaining to the investigation. It’s alongside these that he picks out the sight of a delicate hexagonal box. He’d never paid it much mind before, but it had been important to Emilie so it was important to him.

He picks up the box to investigate it: it’s a size meant for jewelry, all wood, with black sides and a red top. In its entirety it’s decorated with spiraling squares that evoke in his mind the idea of antique Chinese origin.

Something tells him that the box is the object that he came in here for, so he shuts the safe and returns the painting to its place flush against the wall, his focus trained on tracing the smooth edges and precise lines. Its facture, Gabriel notes, is impeccable. Even the hinge appears to be wood, and it’s recessed to be flush with the rest of the box.

He holds the object in his hands and returns to his room to clean up for the night, placing it on his nightstand. He comes back in sleepwear and sits on his mattress to open the box.

Inside is a thick, jet black ring. The design is simple, with a circular disk set into the top and braced with four sturdy studs, the entirety of the metal polished smooth. There are no jewels to be found on it, and instead the raised disk is patterned with a cat’s pawprint. The print, a chartreuse, seems to glow against the jet black metal. It’s almost… tacky in a way, the kind of item that one might either find at the jewelry counter of an American department store or be able to convince the French elite to buy for a grossly overinflated price.

Nevertheless, he picks it out of the box to inspect it. There are no markings and not even so much as a scratch on the body of it, as though it had never been worn for any length of time. He scoffs in his head, a sarcastic _“I wonder why”_ trolleying its way through his thoughts.

Still, he finds himself curious to see what it would look like on, and places it on his right hand, opposite his wedding band. It fits perfectly, and when he’s done marveling at how surprisingly comfortable the thing is, he looks up…

…Directly into the luminous green eyes of a small, floating, catlike creature.

“I’m hungry,” it says in a tiny, gravelly voice. He looks back down at the ring, incredulous to see it is now a simple, sturdy silver.

* * *

Gabriel reels in surprise, his mind nearly stopping on the spot. As he gazes into the thing’s eyes, every part of him tells him that this is a thing that should not exist. Yet there it remains, seemingly sucking the light out of the room into its form, dropping an occasional fleck of darkness like an inverse speck of glitter.

It then takes him a further second to process that it has _spoken to him_ , and he momentarily wonders if he is hallucinating instead. But he continues to stare at the creature, and its wide eyes slowly form into a suspicious squint, and he knows that can’t be the case, either.

“Well? I’m hungry, mister. You look rich, got any camembert? Name’s Plagg, by the way.”

Gabriel turns his head to regard “Plagg” skeptically.

“What even are you? A… tiny floating cat?”

“Pretty much. Also a Kwami, a god of destruction, and incredibly handsome. You wear that ring you’ve got there, I make you into a superhero when you say ‘claws out’, and then you get to borrow my power while you’re transformed.”

Gabriel attempts to maintain a neutral expression, though he genuinely cannot process much of what he’s heard.

“You said you were… hungry?”

“Yes! _Finally_ , someone who gets it!”

“Very well, I will feed you. But only if you will cooperate and tell me more when you’re sated.”

“Deal,” Plagg nods resolutely.

* * *

 

Plagg unceremoniously inhales an entire wheel of Camembert while relaying to Gabriel the conditions of his power, and Gabriel listens attentively, the gears turning in his mind.

The power of destruction does, indeed, seem quite alluring.

“Plagg. Claws out.”

Gabriel feels the transformation of his clothing around him, like electricity next to his skin. At the end of it, he stands in front of the full length mirror in his room to inspect its handiwork. Plagg had been impressively thorough (if a bit scatterbrained), indicating briefly that the holder’s personality heavily influenced the result of the transformation. It showed.

Gabriel is dressed in a perfectly tailored tuxedo. The ensemble is jet black, save for a white dress shirt, pristine white spats, and a vibrant pale blue bowtie that complemented his eyes. Black gloves taper his fingers into claws, and at his neck sits a hefty ruff of black fur. From having worked with one too many pieces in fur, Gabriel expects it to be itchy and uncomfortable, but is surprised to find that it is not. It feels nearly like a mane, an extension of himself. His head is covered by a rather leather-like balaclava, with two tapered peaks on his head that sit like pinned back cat ears.

He’s momentarily shocked by the change in his eyes, which have gained catlike pupils and whose sclera have become the same blue as his bowtie. He pulls his lip up, questioning that part of the transformation, only to find he has also obtained needle-like fangs.

On a first pass, it checks out. He steps closer to the mirror to examine the ever-so-faint pewter pinstriping on the suit, which winks in the light and lends the suit a more supernatural feel. Attached to the small of his back, above the jacket’s single long tail, is a small silver pipe. _The weapon_ , his brain supplies, though he’s not entirely sure that it isn’t partially Plagg’s voice. He takes the baton from where it sits and wills it into extending to the size of a staff, light but lethal.

This could work.

“Claws in.”

Gabriel’s transformation happens in reverse and when he opens his eyes again, he sees himself in front of the mirror, again dressed in his nightwear. His eyes are once again human, back to being only their stormy blue and with dark circles he knew weren’t there in months prior.

Plagg ejects from the ring and barely misses hitting the mirror.

“What? Don’t you like it?” he asks.

“No, it’s quite… tasteful. I’ll be honest in that I hadn’t expected much when you used the term ‘superhero’, but I will say I’m impressed.”

Plagg motions dusting his paw off against his chest with a, “Well, I have been in the business some time now,” his flattered tone nevertheless overconfident. After a moment’s consideration, he continues.

“So what are you going to call yourself? Every hero has a name.”

Gabriel pictures the slick tuxedo in his head as he closes his eyes, and the name comes to him after a few long seconds.

“Tuxedo Cat.”

Plagg lifts an eyebrow at the name and holds back a derisive snort. “OK, you’re the boss, boss. There could be worse, I guess, though that’s pretty unoriginal.”

Gabriel fixes Plagg with a steely look, but drops it slightly upon realizing the jab is probably warranted.

“My son and wife would appreciate the wordplay, even if you don’t.”

“A family man, eh?”

“For as much of one as I have left, I suppose,” he says to his reflection, “…I suppose.”

* * *

 

Gabriel stews for the remainder of that night and into the next day, tossing and turning and deciding his course of action for the next evening, which he decides is the best cover for testing out his powers.

Or, at least, he stews when he’s not being asked a multitude of inane questions by his new acquaintance. “What’s this? What’s that? Can I eat this?”

It’s as though the tiny creature had been trapped in the ring for a century. Gabriel begins to wonder whether or not someone had stuck him there for a good reason.

          He watches over his balcony as the sun dips below the horizon, Plagg hovering at his shoulder. The gentle breeze turns cool as the oranges and reds give way to purple and indigo, lights beginning to flick on as the shadow of night casts its way over the city. Gabriel is silent until the sky is nearly black and a few of the brighter stars show, the golden lamplight in the cracks between buildings beating them out in mocking orders of magnitude.

          “Claws out,” he finally says. Plagg begins some half-hearted remark of surprise that is cut off as he’s sucked into the ring, and Gabriel scans the horizon with his now enhanced night vision. He finds his mark and vaults away from his estate, invisible to the populace below.

          Lesaq sleeps silently, comfortable on his plush bed, but ultimately alone. Tuxedo Cat stands at the glass doors looking in for a moment before sneering; it’s hard not to derive some joy from the fact that he can’t seem to find someone who can stand him enough to sleep with him at this point in his life. Tuxedo Cat unlatches the door softly and strides in, his shadow casting over the pristine bed.

          “I’d love to pay you back even half the agony you’ve put me through,” says Tux lowly to the sleeping form, “But I’m feeling…  _ optimistic _ about this new discovery of mine.”

          Lesaq doesn’t so much as shift.

          “I’d really rather not have to spoil it by looking at your face while you’re conscious and besides,” he says as he brandishes a claw, “I’m not here to give you more nonsense to spew. You’ve told enough lies about me for one lifetime.”

          Again, the man does not react.

          “...I, on the other hand, have been told that dead men tell no tales. Let’s see if that’s true.”

          Tux decides it for the best if he closes the glass door on his way out. Wouldn’t want the noise of the street below to disturb the man while he dyes one last swatch of fabric. 

          Red always had been a favorable color for Michael Lesaq.

 

          Tuxedo Cat drops nonchalantly onto his balcony and calls off his transformation casually. Plagg, irate, immediately flies into Gabriel’s face.

          “Are you  _ kidding _ me?” the tiny cat hisses, “What  _ WAS  _ that?!”

          Gabriel raises an eyebrow at him, unperturbed, “You said yourself you grant the power of destruction… surely  _ that’s _ something that’s never been misused throughout the history of your wielders. I thought what I did was rather humane in comparison to what you described.”

          “You’re  _ not supposed to kill people!  _ Is that not basic morality?!” Plagg screeches.

          “Basic  _ morality _ ,” Gabriel volleys, “Is not lying to the press about your rival murdering his beloved wife.  _ Basic morality _ left us some time ago; I have just allowed its safe return.”

          “You’re supposed to be a  _ hero _ , Gabriel.”

          “And a hero I am. The world of fashion has just been rid of the most rotten apple in the barrel.”

          “You’re a  _ murderer _ . You’re no better than what he said about you--”

          Gabriel’s face goes hard and he snatches Plagg out of the air in front of him. The cold metal of the miraculous burns at Plagg’s flank, leaving him unable to phase out of Gabriel’s strangling hold.

          “You listen to  _ me. _ Regardless of the person you think I am, I am your  _ master _ . I wear your miraculous and I control your power. And until I renounce you or you are forcibly taken from me, you obey my every command. Understood?”

          Plagg wheezes, nodding. Gabriel’s hold loosens and Plagg falls a foot from the ground before he can catch himself.

          Gabriel turns, halfway into the door to his bedroom.

          “It should go without saying that my first order is that we never discuss Lesaq’s fate again. Come.”

          Plagg massages his neck and floats reluctantly after with a mumbled, “I  _ hate _ when they listen to me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's gonna take me a lot longer to get around to the next chapter because I don't actually have it written entirely! Not to mention the stuff I have written has had p l e n t y of readthroughs and is surprisingly polished if you ask me


	3. Release the Bug

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marinette comes face-to-face with her destiny; kindness, as it were, has consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could reread this for the dozenth time and find a million things to say in the notes but instead of doing that I'm just gonna drop this and hope it speaks for itself.  
> Shoutout to [pivoineink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pivoineink/pseuds/pivoineink) for beta-ing btw

It takes a couple of days for news of Lesaq’s murder to make it onto the news, but it’s immediately all over. Paris’s fashion elites fall into their usual song and dance of not-so-heartfelt condolences, and a few are called in for questioning. But everyone’s story in some way checks out. There’s absolutely no evidence at the scene; no prints on the unlocked balcony door, no DNA, no witnesses. Even the slit in the man’s throat gives no evidence. The investigators are dumbfounded, and a few among them marvel that it was as if the assailant was magic. Had there not been evidence that the victim was, in fact, Lesaq himself, many would have been tempted to believe that it was all some gory, elaborate ruse. 

Gabriel is too deep in his own personal troubles to be of much worth in the investigation, but he provides what little he knows.

Regardless, what the public doesn’t understand, Master Fu does. Wayzz senses it the first time Tuxedo Cat transforms.

“Master, Plagg has resurfaced.”

Fu freezes in the middle of pouring his tea.

“You’re certain?”

“Without a doubt. His aura is stronger than most.”

When Fu hears the radio broadcast, he knows.

“It’s time we fix my biggest mistake, Wayzz.”

 

* * *

 

Marinette Dupain-Cheng wakes up late on the first day of school, spills her breakfast, and is all-in-all unsurprised by this sequence of events. Her luck has always been bad. All the same, she’s eager to turn over a new leaf and her parents send her out the door with a first-day-of-school set of pistachio macarons to share. She bustles past people, weaving her way across the busy alleyways, and is making good time until she crosses the very last street before her destination. 

An old man in a red Hawaiian shirt is hobbling across the alleyway at the tail end of the crossing signal, and Marinette hears the rumble of speeding tire on cobbles before she notices the car barreling at him with no signs of slowing. She turns back to grab his hand and tug him to safety…

… and trips once his feet hit the other side, spilling her box of macarons and losing all but two. 

“Are you okay, sir?” she asks.

He looks down at her (though he’s not all that tall himself), and replies in the affirmative.

“Thanks to your help, miss, I am. Though I’m afraid the same can’t be said of your cookies…”

She offers one of the ones that hadn’t touched the pavement to him.

“It’s okay, I can always help my parents make more tomorrow. The important thing is that you’re safe. I have to get to school now, but please take care!”

They wave to each other as she trots into the school, and he devours half of the macaron in one bite.

“Not bad at all,” he says, lifting his cane into his hands and walking into the alleyway as though he were still young.

When she gets to school, it’s the same faces in homeroom as she’s been seeing growing up: Kim and Max and Alix are already squabbling about something, Ivan is in the back, Nino sits alone up front, drumming on the table to something in his headphones that she can hear the faint bass of. She waves to him and he lights up, waving back. Chloe and Sabrina are there too, unfortunately, and the former seems to be berating a new girl with bronze skin, glasses, and hair that tapers from a deep brown into an orange ombre.

“...No, you’re in _his_ seat, so shove off!” Chloe caterwauls.

“What, are there no other seats you two can sit in?” the new girl fires back.

“Chloe, don’t you usually sit by the window anyway?” Marinette supplies with a hint of irritation. The rest of the class falls silent to watch Chloe let out a scandalized scoff and slink back to her normal location. Marinette assumes hers, which also happens to be the seat next to…

“Thanks for the save. The name’s Alya, by the way.”

Alya proffers a hand to shake, the gesture carrying an impressive amount of confidence. Marinette reaches out to reciprocate.

“Marinette. I haven’t seen you before, are you new?”

“Yeah, we just moved from Martinique.”

“Martinique?! Wow!” Marinette marvels, “What brought your family all the way here?”

“Well, my mom recently started a job at _her_ \--” Alya glares in Chloe’s direction, “Dad’s hotel. I didn’t think supervillains existed in real life, but sheesh!”

“That’s Chloe for you, I’m sorry you had to deal with it so soon. That’s not a very nice welcome…” Marinette stage whispers before picking up in a louder tone. “Would you like to split my last macaron with me to take the edge off of it? My parents are bakers.”

“I’d love to, Marinette,” Alya smiles.

Just as they finish, the bell rings and the first day of class begins.

Alya joins Marinette and Nino for lunch, and manages to get into a surprisingly passionate conversation about the new issue of _Dark Owl_ with Nino. Alya’s company makes for a fine trio, and Marinette can tell that she and Alya will make great friends. Her encounter with the old man that morning is all but forgotten, and whoever Chloe’s “him” is, he doesn’t end up showing.

 

* * *

 

“How was your first day of school, sweetheart? Did everyone like the macarons?” Tom inquires as his daughter opts to enter their home through the storefront. 

Marinette pauses. 

“It was good, papa, but ah-- the macarons,” she taps her index fingers together, looking guiltily up into his eyes.

“Did you drop those, too?” He laughs.

Marinette deflates. “Yeah, all but two. I’m thinking of making more, if that’s okay! I gave one to an old man who almost got hit by a car on my way in-- that’s when I lost them-- and then the other I shared with the new girl who sat next to me today. Her name’s Alya and she’s really sweet! And she liked the macaron, too.”

As Marinette draws within radius of him behind the counter, he ruffles her hair.

“I’m glad I have such a sweet daughter as you. Was the man okay?”

“Yeah, I was able to get him across the sidewalk in time, but it was pretty scary! I can’t imagine what would have happened if I didn’t do anything… the nerve of some drivers!”

“I’m glad you were there to help, Marinette, but be careful! There are lots of hooligans out there, and your mom and I both worry you’ll run into them. Remember to ask for help if a situation gets out of hand.”

“I will, papa.”

Sabine pokes her head out from behind the kitchen doorway as her daughter heads up the stairs.

 “Eventful day?”

“Yeah, I’ll tell you both all about it at dinner! I’ve already got a composition to do for French, though, so I’m going to get started on it. I’ll be in my room!”

“Okay, sweetie, we’ll call you when dinner is ready.”

Marinette hollers her thanks as she tromps up the stairs and continues up to her room, sliding her already heavy backpack down her shoulders to climb the steps up to her trapdoor. She sets it on her chair with a soft _thunk_ , and goes to her desk to turn on her computer. She sits and reaches for the monitor, but looks down to find a jewelry box placed intentionally in the center of the desk. 

It looks a little like something she would expect her mom to pass down to her, but her mom would have definitely told her if she was about to receive an important family heirloom. 

Curious.

She opens the box to find two ladybug-looking earrings; they’re bright red enamel with five spots dark as coal on each. Really, they’re pretty cute! She takes them out to try them on experimentally, intrigued by this surprise gift and already wondering what they’ll look like with some of her outfits.

She goes over to her vanity to check the mirror, and when she looks into it her eyes bulge wide. To her credit, nothing immediately escapes her mouth, but when the tiny red figure sees its been noticed and chirps “Hello!”, the same tiny red figure that _was definitely not there before,_ and which is _definitely talking to her and floating,_ she lets out an undignified yelp and wheels around. It persists, and Marinette fumbles for the used water glass she’d forgotten to take downstairs earlier and left, now conveniently, on the vanity.

“Ack! What are you?! Some kind of floating rat?” She brandishes the cup like it will magically transform into a vacuum to suck up the creature.

“Ah- Marinette, please let me--” the creature squeaks, but whatever it was about to say is cut short as Marinette lunges, her strategy with the glass now to capture it. The creature floats deftly out of the way, causing Marinette to nearly trip over her coffee table, but she manages to save herself and turn to try again.

“Please, wait! I don’t mean any harm!”

“Ahhhhhhh it talks too! Get out of my room!”

Again the creature is left to dodge another haphazard lunge with the cup, and it floats a few inches above the coffee table. Marinette spins again, finally having spent enough adrenaline to pause and assess her situation. She holds herself in a ready stance, breathing a little heavy, eyeing the bright red, tiny talking rat thing that has suddenly appeared, and she decides to pull her best card:

“MOOOO _OOOOOM!_ ” she hollers.

The creature’s big blue eyes widen and it freezes enough to give Marinette the jump she needs to slam the glass down over it, trapping it. It sticks its little hands to the glass.

“Please! Your parents can’t know I’m here!”  
“Then _what are you doing here?!_ ”

“I’m a kwami! I was in the earrings you put on, and now that you’re wearing them I can be out! But nobody can know, it’s too dangerous!”

Marinette pauses at the mention of the earrings. Footsteps can be heard faintly below, and then the sound of Sabine shouting picks up through the floorboards.

“Is everything okay sweetie?”

The… kwami… lets out a small “Eep!” and phases through the glass, zipping to hide up in the parasol attached to Marinette’s chair. The footsteps continue until Sabine lifts the trapdoor and Marinette turns to face her, shock etched in her face.

“Did you call for me?”

“Oh, uh… yes, there was a big bug but I think I got it. Sorry, it really caught me off guard.”

Sabine sighs good naturedly.

“Okay, honey. If you see any more let me know so we can put traps out,” she says as she closes the trapdoor again. Marinette holds her breath for another several seconds before she lets it out and turns to where the “bug” (?) went to hide. It returns again.

“That was close! Thanks for the cover, I knew you were chosen well.”

“I’m hearing a lot of things I don’t understand. Can you explain, _please_?”

“Could you not call me a rat and try to trap me in a glass, _please_?”

Marinette pauses. “Point taken. Sorry.”

The kwami smiles at the apology, apparently not one to hold a grudge long.

“Anyway,” it continues, “My name is Tikki! I am the kwami of creation and good fortune, and you have been chosen to be the next hero to bear the name Ladybug! Really, you’re quite special, Marinette, and we need someone like you to help us. You see, those earrings of yours are called a Miraculous. When you wear them and say the words ‘Spots on!’, I am able to use my powers to transform you into a superhero. But sometimes, miraculouses fall into the wrong hands. My counterpart, the kwami of destruction and misfortune, has had his miraculous befall such a fate. That’s where you come in! You and I together are going to rescue my friend!”

Marinette’s eyebrows furrow, “Spots on?”

“Ack- wait, I wasn’t--”

Something bubbles across Marinette’s skin. It’s gentle, but it has an unmistakable power to it; the feeling gives her a rush of confidence, the kind of confidence that makes her believe she could strut down the Parisian streets in the highest heels and loudest lipstick she could get her hands on and know she was the center of attention. As the feeling trails down her arms and she watches it coat them in a red spandex-looking material, she thinks that’s an urge she wouldn’t normally have on account of her propensity for tripping on her own two feet, and then she laughs because furthermore, she should probably be freaking out way more about this whole magic superhero thing than she is.

Definitely a really strange day.

She looks over to the mirror to catch a bit of her torso, the brilliant scarlet with black spots putting all the soft pinks in her room to shame. In the bottom of the mirror she notices a cord draped across her hip and looks down to find a compact at her side. A communicator? A weapon? Strangely inorganic thoughts cross her mind that feel almost like they’re in Tikki’s voice.

Marinette looks around, now that she’s thinking about it.

“Uh, Tikki? Now what?”

No response, only the faint sound of some squeaky car brakes outside. Tikki is nowhere to be seen.

 

* * *

 

Plagg shifts in Gabriel’s cravat, yawning in satisfaction. 

“Oh good, she’s awake,” he mumbles sleepily. It doesn’t go missed by his holder.

“Who’s awake?” Gabriel inquires, not looking down from his monitor.

“Oh, I said that out loud, didn’t I.”

At this, Gabriel frowns and plucks the kwami from his neck, holding him by the scruff.

“Who, Plagg.” 

Plagg holds eye contact with Gabriel for a moment, considering his words, but the command is evident in Gabriel’s flat intonation, so he can’t actually resist saying anything.

“The Ladybug Kwami. The yang to my yin. The other half of the ultimate power--”

Gabriel somehow manages to both freeze and interrupt Plagg simultaneously.

“Ultimate power, you say?”

“Yeah, you transform with both my ring and her earrings and Boom. Ultimate power. You get a wish, you pay the equivalent price, ultimate power.”

The wheels immediately start turning in Gabriel’s head. One wish? Should be plenty. A smile overtakes his face. This was it! This was what he needed. All he had to do was locate these earrings, get them, and use them. Finally, something simple in his quest to find Emilie. Something finally looking up after months and months of heartache. 

“Do you know where she is? This kwami?”

“Nah, just that she’s out of her box.”

“Do you think she’d come if we make a little chaos?”

Plagg’s face falls, “Normally I like chaos, but it just doesn’t have the same ring to it coming out of your mouth. You gotta work on the delivery.”

“You use _your_ mouth to inhale the most wretchedly pungent cheese known to France. Claws out.”

It occurs to Plagg, as he goes into the ring, that this maybe this isn’t one of his best ideas.

 

* * *

 

Marinette-- no, actually, wait. 

Tikki did say nobody could know it was her, right?

_Ladybug_ feels a chill pass over her. Those same little inorganic thoughts worm in the back of her mind, and they tell her something bad is coming. She needs to go outside. As quickly as she can, she opens the trapdoor to her balcony and sets off toward the Eiffel Tower. The rooftops are a lot easier to jump over than they might be otherwise, and a lot of it feels like second nature, somehow. She unhooks the thing at her hip, which she realizes on the spot is a _yo-yo_ , and gives it an experimental hurl at a chimney. Luck must be on her side, because even though the throw isn’t great, the little toy goes exactly where she wants it to, wrapping around the stone stack once, twice, three times before locking on itself. It seems like the right thing to do now is jump, and she swings and prays that the cable is as strong as her gut keeps telling her it is.

And then she’s swinging through the air. Between the sensation of pulling… A Spider-Man? A Tarzan? And the heavy feeling that keeps growing in her stomach, her heart feels like it’s in her throat, but she presses on even as her dread builds.

She gets to be about four blocks away from the park surrounding the Tower when it happens. As she stands on a rooftop and eyes her next move, a metallic creak echoes through the air. It’s loud, plaintive almost, and all of the rest of the world slows to a stop in deference to such a hideous cry. Everything waits, suspended, to find out what could have possibly made that noise. Ladybug scans the horizon to find anything, and her peripheral vision catches motion toward where she’d been heading.

Is the Tower crooked?

Her eyes widen.

_No._

The Eiffel Tower is _collapsing._  

Another metal shriek pierces the air, and then the human screams rush to meet her. This was unnatural. What was going on? Who would do such a thing? Who was going to help?

It hits her that she is, in fact, the person dressed in a bright red superhero costume, with superhero powers, and she nearly gets sick, and the Eiffel Tower is still tilting, the groan of buckling metal rocketing over the skyline. She doesn’t feel herself start to move, and she doesn’t register her throwing her yo-yo in a desperate attempt to do something… _anything_ to make the horror in front of her stop happening. The little toy plays pinball with streetlamps in the tower’s path, weaving a web of magic cable that Ladybug hopes might cushion the fall and spare the few stranded tourists who didn’t manage to clear out.

The top half of the tower fully decouples and she plants her feet in the ground, saying whatever prayers she can for all of the tourists inside the tower as it rushes toward her netting. 

 

* * *

 

The sound of it hitting the pavement is indescribable and from such a short distance, it leaves her ears ringing while the earth lurches beneath her feet. Billows of kicked up dust rush past her, but when she opens her eyes she realizes that her net did at least slow the tower’s descent some. The pavement below it has been caved in a few feet, but it’s nothing like the destruction it probably should have been.

But there will be casualties, to be sure. She tries not to look; she can’t really retract her yo-yo at this point either, now that the mess of string has been pinned by the decapitated tower. This might be a problem left for someone else. Emergency response. Construction workers with cranes. Someone who isn’t a fourteen year old girl dressed like a ladybug.

But before she can turn tail, though, a masculine voice resounds through the courtyard, above the din of people yelling for loved ones and the mob of onlookers who are advancing on the scene.

“Ah, Paris! My fair city!”

_This,_ her gut says, _Is the root of your problem._

She looks around, but there is nobody in sight who could appear to be making this announcement. Did the owner of this voice hijack a PA system?

“You may call me Tuxedo Cat. I am here to let you know that I am looking for something, and that I may be taking certain… ah, _measures_ to find it. If you happen to see someone who looks like they might be dressed as a Ladybug-themed superhero, _I’ll be needing them._ ”

 

Ladybug drops her yo-yo and runs.

 

* * *

 

Chest heaving, she arrives a few blocks from her home and sandwiches herself into a deserted back alleyway, the hot stink assaulting her nose and sending her stomach rolling. She swallows the feeling as best she can, along with the tears in her eyes. 

This couldn’t be happening.

She shovels her hands into her bangs and sinks into a ball, pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes. This couldn’t be happening. This was just an awful nightmare, and she’d wake up…

She knows she’s already awake. She’s on the run, and she needs to get out of these clothes. It was “spots on” to get them on, right? So maybe…

“Spots off!”

It does the trick. The magic recedes like a wave, and the confidence she thought she had does as well. The tears finally leak past all of her barriers.

Tikki floats gently down onto Marinette’s knee, uncertain of what exactly to say to her youngest charge. She knew this would happen eventually, but not so _soon_.

“You did the right thing, Marinette,” she coos, patting the sobbing girl’s hair, “You helped save a lot of people, and they aren’t going to blame you for helping.”

“Did you know this was going to happen?” Marinette says, a bite in her voice despite it cracking in the middle of the sentence.

“No, truly--”

“I can’t do this,” she interrupts, still not lifting her head from her knees, “pick someone else.”

“Marinette, please- you still--”

“Just take the stupid earrings and go!”

Marinette finally looks up; her eyes are red, her nose and cheeks blotchy. Her hand is shaking as she tries to remove her earring, and Tikki’s eyes widen as she flits to intervene.

“You can still fix it! You didn’t use the cure!”

Marinette’s hands still, at least.

“The miraculous cure. When you summon a lucky charm, use it, and return it, the cure goes out and it repairs all the damage done during a fight. It’ll be okay. _They’ll_ be okay.”

Marinette goes practically limp, so Tikki takes her hand and leads it back around so she can look at Marinette’s face and pat her hand at the same time.

“I didn’t get the chance to explain it earlier. I’m sorry.”

“Can’t someone else do it?”

“No, Marinette. You were _chosen_ for this. Only you can do this.”

 

Tikki learns she will regret that choice of words for a very, very long time.

 

* * *

 

Marinette trudges into her house, hoping to slip past her parents and take a good shower. 

No luck there.

“Marinette! Where have you been?” Sabine admonishes.

“Sorry, _maman_ , I was--” Marinette looks up, and Sabine gasps.

“You’ve seen, haven’t you.”

Marinette can only nod. They have _no_ idea.

“Y-yes. I uh, I… I think I’d like to take a shower now.”

“Oh, honey, of course.”

And it’s left at that.

 

Tikki, graciously, is silent as Marinette takes a long, hot shower and thoroughly washes the sins of her day off. She towels off, goes into her room to change and think, and sits quietly, scrolling through the news articles. It’s all over international news, printed in big letters.

 

**LA TOUR EIFFEL TOMBE**  

**ATTACK TOPPLES EIFFEL**

**IL TORRE D’EIFFEL È CADUTO**  

 

She can’t look away from the screen, but she can’t bring herself to click any of the articles. Once was enough. She doesn’t want to know what the media have said of her.

Finally, Tikki speaks up.

“Are you ready to go back out? The sooner the better in my opinion.”

Marinette regards her out of the corner of her eye and chuffs.

“I’ll never be ready, I don’t think. But…”

She rises and stretches, trying to work the intense anxiety out of every nerve in her body.

“...I think it’s a bandaid I’d rather rip off now, like you said.”

“Okay,” Tikki says tentatively. “This time, this shouldn’t be hard. I promise. When you transform, say ‘Lucky Charm’ to call an item that will help you solve the problem. You will have five minutes to figure out a solution with it before you will be forced to transform back. When you are able to solve the problem with the item and there is no longer any danger, you will say the words ‘Miraculous Ladybug’ to initiate the cure and fix any magical damage and its effects. Then you just need to find a safe place to detransform! Oh, and I will need to recharge after you call your lucky charm. Cookies work best~”

Marinette swallows her nerves. Only she could do this… only she… she needed to start with a simple task and goes downstairs to grab some cookies to put in her clutch. She heads back up to her room, shaking, and says “Spots on” before she can think on it any further.

Ladybug is back out on the streets and prays that she isn’t walking to her slaughter. Only she could do this. She _could_ do this. Luckily, her yo-yo has regenerated on her person, so she doesn’t have to use her jelly legs to get back to the Eiffel Tower. About from her vantage point where she first saw it fall, she pauses. 

“Lucky Charm!” she says with as much enthusiasm as she can muster, just like Tikki showed her.

Immediately, an object materializes in the sky, and Ladybug steps back to catch it. 

A megaphone.

Ladybug shifts it in her arms; aside from the ostentatious red with black polka dots, it appears to be a perfectly normal megaphone.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

She stares at it a moment and then scans the horizon, jarred at the sight of the severed base of the tower, helicopters orbiting it like vultures. There’s so many people there, all so afraid despite the fact that she’s apparently going to reset everything… she has to reassure them. She knows what she has to do.

As quickly as she can, without dropping the lucky charm, she swings to the Eiffel Tower and sets foot upon one of the more neatly sheared metal beams. Out before her lays the upper half of the structure like Gulliver among the Lilliputians. A few people nearer the tower notice her carmine outfit and point up at her wildly, so she hefts the megaphone into her hand, swallows hard, and turns it on to speak.

The people of Paris, maybe even the world, freeze to listen.

“Paris, my home. What has happened here today was an extraordinary attack on our city, our people, and our country, and it was not made by normal means. A new type of evil has risen, and we must show it that, above all, we will not be frightened.”

She pauses to take a deep breath, lowering the megaphone briefly in the hope that it won’t catch the way her inhale shudders.

“I am Ladybug, and I have been chosen to combat the culprit of this horrific attack. I will protect you with everything I can and do my best to stop this monster. I only ask that you stand by me to protect our home from evil. And, for those of you who don’t believe me,” she turns off the megaphone and drops down to an undamaged beam before resuming. “Allow me to win your trust. **Miraculous Ladybug!** ” 

The crowd remains silent as the megaphone bursts into a wave of bright pink magic. Or, more accurately, the magic is composed of an innumerable quantity of ladybugs riding a pink wave of light. The energy swirls around her, an unexpected wave of confidence building in her as she basks in it. Around her, the ladybugs burst out. They erase the top of the tower from the ground, wipe clean the cracks in the cement. Ambulances stand at the edge of flat ground, People begin to sit up on stretchers, completely unscathed. Ladybug feels an incredible updraft as the energy traces the path of the tower, rebuilding it in its wake as it spirals to the top. Momentarily, it coalesces at the tower’s apex, and then explodes out in every direction across the sky.

A considerable crowd is drawn, and she can hear them screaming cheers as she holds out her arms. Her earrings chirp a warning, reminding her that she doesn’t have much time, so she disappears out through the other side of the tower, the crowd yelling still echoing in her ears as she takes a wide loop home.

The transformation again wears off only a few moments after she ducks into the alleyway behind her house. A strange sensation overtakes her. A sense of duty. 

Marinette is showered with kisses by her parents when she walks in.

“Oh, did you see? It’s a miracle! We have a superhero protector! Paris is saved!”

Despite her parents’ enthusiasm, Marinette frowns.

Has everyone let the last two hours slide? The internet seems to indicate so when she sits down again at her computer. 

**PARIS GIFTED A LUCKY ANGEL - LIVE BROADCAST**

 

Antsy, she stands up and goes to regard herself in the mirror. Tikki, recharged, appears at her side. 

“Marinette! You were amazing! You’re going to make a great Ladybug.”

She sees the tower falling in her mind, knowing she watched people die this afternoon, even if she revived them. 

Her expression remains flat. When she looked in the mirror, she didn’t see a savior, or an angel, or a hero.

She saw herself, a terrified fourteen-year-old girl.

She saw that she had been gifted an anathema, a terrible job to do that would mean blood on her hands to give away. To keep it was a bright red target on her back to a person who effortlessly destroyed the Eiffel Tower.

The Ladybug Miraculous was hardly one of luck. In fact, it was far and away the worst thing to happen in her long line of minor misfortunes.

 

* * *

 

Gabriel slumps into the chair in his office as though he’s been spending all day hard at work on his designs. Plagg hovers in front of him, quiet, and judgmental.

Gabriel finally speaks.

“Are you going to just float there or do you actually have something to say?”

“You already know what I’m going to say.”

“You’re right, I don’t need you to proselytize me. Don’t waste your breath.”

“Then how did you know Ladybug would recover the damage _you_ caused?” 

“Simple, it was a calculated risk. You’ve got the power of destruction, the ‘yang to your yin’ was the most likely to be able to negate it, was it not?”

“That’s a pretty big gamble to make. Not sure I like your style.”

“Well, the sooner I get those earrings, the sooner it will no longer be a problem. I can bring my wife back and then you and I can part ways.”

“And how many people are you going to kill to get where you’re going?”

“Well, zero, if Ladybug does her job and comes quietly. Come, Plagg, that’s enough on this subject; I’ve got work to do.”

Plagg grumbles lowly as he dutifully assumes his place in Gabriel’s cravat, scheming of ways to get him where it hurt, to help Ladybug wherever he could. He nods off to visions of tripping Gabriel down an endless flight of stairs.

 

* * *

 

_Truth be told, Plagg always had to keep some form of protection up to stop Cataclysm from destroying its holder. He just never much thought about it because the transformation insulated its user with Plagg’s power by nature. There was no conscious effort on his part to ensure that his holder was safe._

_This holder was strong and ambitious. His raw need for betterment allowed him to far surpass all his predecessors in his mastery of the advanced techniques: the scope of Cataclysm, the costume generation, the catlike senses. He’d pushed the boundaries of what the bond of human and kwami could do, both in and out of costume._

_The guardian, a devout scholar, began writing a grimoire to document the findings._

_Plagg meets Tikki atop the lighthouse, as they’d promised. Plagg is still gravely ill, a full day later, and Tikki places a gentle paw on his back in the hopes that some of her energy could flow over the shared connection._

_“I told Alharis he was not the right choice,” Plagg hacks, “And now we’ve had to pay the price. He was too much of an egotistical scholar to listen.”_

_Off in the distance, the Library of Alexandria burns._

_In the central courtyard, stirred by the searing vortices of air around it, are the remains of the seventh holder of the black cat miraculous, the first to summon Cataclysm out of transformation and the first to die at its hands._

 

* * *

 

Plagg awakens an hour later with visions of his seventh holder dancing behind his eyes, and an idea in his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long one! I'm sorry it got so angsty; I know the first several chapters are really depressing, but it's unfortunately a necessary sacrifice to build up the fluff. I hope the spurts of lighter moments do help!!


	4. Face-to-Face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is she more than you bargained for yet?

A few days later, Tuxedo Cat grows impatient with the news articles and decides that it might be good to get some fresh air and drum up public support. 

In a world where ‘public support’ means striking fear into the hearts of civilians by collapsing bridges across the Seine in his spare time, that is. The public, to its credit, learns quickly and clears off the bridge when he stops traffic and dramatically slaps his destruction-charged hand into the center of the road. The countdown begins, so he goes to recharge while he waits for his prey. 

Marinette watches the news, which she supposes is now going to be a new hobby of hers, and pales when she watches the bystander footage of the bridge collapsing as a dark figure hops off. 

It’s not even the end of her first week of school. She hopes he doesn’t try anything like his first stunt, and her voice shakes when she calls for Tikki to transform her for the third time. _She can do this. Only_ she can do this. She schools her expression to something flat, dutiful, and serious, something easy to hold that wasn’t the grimace she wanted to wear, and she sets out toward the bridge onscreen. 

When she arrives on the scene, police vehicles have things largely under control, her new foe nowhere to be seen. People seem excited to see her, and she gives the crowd a businesslike wave before heading off in the direction Tuxedo Cat was last seen going.

The magic of the transformation must do something to her fear response, because she only quakes a little while out scanning the now deserted streets and doesn’t jump out of her skin when a trash can lid clangs loudly in an alley behind her. She turns back to investigate, yo-yo at the ready. 

There’s nothing in the alley, so she turns to leave.

That’s when she finds her path back is blocked by the same dark figure she saw on her monitor. He’s tall, dressed to the nines in a fine suit and a sculpted mask that covered most of his head, and his luminous pale blue cat eyes bore into hers when he looks at her.

“My, my. You’re a lot younger than you looked in front of the camera. Ladybug, yes?” he croons in a smooth voice.

She swallows. He doesn’t move closer, clearly waiting for a response. This wasn’t the time to be cowed, not after what she’d announced a few days earlier. This was it. She plants her feet into the ground and stands tall.

“Yes. I’m Ladybug.”

“Shame. I’m going to be needing those earrings of yours. Can I give you the option to hand them over without a fight?”

Ladybug pauses a moment, a bit taken aback at the incredibly genuine-sounding offer. _If only it were that easy,_ she laments in her head. Instead, she looks him square in the eyes and slowly shakes her head.

“Shame. Ah, well. It was worth a shot.”

Tuxedo Cat lunges at her.

Something clicks in Ladybug’s head as she sidesteps his lunge. The whole thing goes in slow motion, really. It was strange, but actually being in front of him was a lot less scary than the thought of him. Before, he was an unseen force. His anonymity as an entity, his unpredictability his greatest weapon. But now, seeing that he was a human like her, a human with limits, gave her the courage to believe she stood a chance against him. She just had to find what his limits were, had to be quick and clever.

Tuxedo Cat gracefully skids to a halt and pivots back.

“Even if you were able to get my earrings,” she posits, “how are you going to wear them? Do you have your ears pierced?”

“Do you really think that’s a problem that will ultimately stop me?” He comes at her again without missing a beat, and she notices the sharp looking claws on his gloves.

“Ah, I guess not,” she says attempting to sidestep again.

However, it seems the same trick doesn’t work twice on him. He aims low, tearing through her suit and slicing her ankle. As she begins to crumple and get weight off of it, yelping, he spins and takes something off of his back. The next thing she knows, she’s pinned against the stone wall, a cool metal baton at her chest.

Well, actually, it’s unfair to say that’s the next thing she knows, as something a little odd happened when he made contact with her and tore her suit. That little floss of thoughts in her mind that didn’t feel like hers, what she presumes to be Tikki’s presence now, seemed surprised. Like something had passed between her and Tuxedo Cat.

Tuxedo Cat reaches for her earrings.

“I wasn’t expecting this to be so easy if you were going to demand I take them by force,” he says.

“Because it isn’t this easy. Lucky charm!”

A ladybug-spotted picnic blanket falls from the sky, draping itself over Tuxedo Cat, and he has to let go of Ladybug to try pulling it off with both hands. She wiggles out away from him and snatches the blanket with her yo-yo just as he manages to throw it off; he looks up to see the edge of the blanket flapping in the wind as it passes his vision onto the rooftop above.

He extends his baton to propel himself up and give chase.

She’s incredibly easy to spot weaving across the rooftops, and then she dips down into a courtyard and out of view. He follows blindly; if her miraculous is anything like his, her clock is ticking and he can’t afford to lose her.

Ladybug holds the blanket in her hands, looking around the courtyard. She gets the sense that it has yet to serve its true purpose, and scans for ways in which she can use it to trap her pursuer. A laundry-filled clothesline catches her eye, and she rushes to make her setup before Tuxedo Cat catches up to her.

It’s just after she returns to the middle of the courtyard that she sees him appear on the roof from the direction she came. She drops into a more ready stance, her yo-yo clenched in her hand. Tuxedo Cat pauses, then jumps down from the top of the roof to get to her. 

She lets go of her yo-yo in that exact moment, and the red end rockets up against the will of gravity with a decisive _snap_. It obeys a different master: the incredible tension it’s under as it hurtles around the open space, disguised to look like an old phone line, a clothesline, a spiderweb of modern human comforts. It rams into him, quickly dragging him into the blanket resting on the line and catching him in the trail of freed cable that wraps him. He’s yanked into the grass at Ladybug’s feet and lands with a hard thud.

He tries to wiggle his right hand, pinned awkwardly against his chest, to grasp both the blanket and the line. 

“Cataclysm,” he says, hissing, and the blanket and line wither as though they’ve become ancient in the span of a second. He moves his arms outward and rips them apart, freed.

Ladybug pauses, dropping the string of her poor broken yo-yo as Tuxedo Cat rises back to his full height in front of her. 

Then he falters.

His eyes widen as he sucks in a pained wheeze.

He puts a hand to his chest, wheezing again and doubles over to cough. When he does, dusty black smoke starts to appear. 

“What… have you _done_?” When he straightens back up painfully, she can make out embers of dark energy glowing at his chest beneath his hand, somehow still darker than his suit and also leaking that same black smoke.

Ladybug takes a step back, hands raised.

“I didn’t do anything! You’re the one that used that cataclysm thing!”

His eyes widen as he stares at her a second more, and then without further comment, he _runs._  

Ladybug has no idea what just happened. It seemed weird that he could be affected by his own power… was he going to be okay? She shudders. If _he_ was affected like that, she didn’t want to think about what would happen to her, or worse yet, a regular civilian.

The sense of unease that seems to scramble the air around him has dissipated too, though, so she walks over to pick up a tattered piece of picnic blanket and holds it into the sky.

“Miraculous Ladybug!”

Her earrings beep; the magic places her repaired yo-yo in her hand and heals her ankle before heading the direction of the bridge like a tidal wave.

 

* * *

 

Tuxedo Cat drops behind a dumpster to detransform. He has to get these clothes _off_ . The pain in his chest is indescribable- the best adjective he can come up with is _curdling_. A small rivulet of magic finds him and curls around him, stopping the decay of his suit and his flesh before it moves on, but the pain doesn’t recede much. A flash of green lightning envelops him as his transformation drops, and he unbuttons his shirt. The skin below is pristine, but another fit of violent coughs overtakes him and he can feel himself expelling more dark smoke. Plagg, too, looks horrendous, his whiskers drooping and his dark aura oddly wobbly. Gabriel silently scoops up the kwami and rings for his driver discreetly.

 

* * *

 

Tikki, in between bites of a cookie, beams up at Marinette from the safety of her clutch purse. 

“You did an incredible job today, Marinette! I knew you would know the right thing to do.”

Marinette looks at Tikki, squinting. “Hm. It could have gone much worse, I guess, but...”

“But?” Tikki echoes.

“But one thing is still bothering me.”

Tikki finishes her next bite of cookie and looks up at Marinette with a strange glint in her eye. “Why Tuxedo Cat was weak to his own power?”

Marinette stares at Tikki in surprise, her eyes widening and her fist smacking into her open palm. “Yes! How did you know?!”

Tikki smiles back after putting the last bit of cookie in her mouth.

“You felt it too, didn’t you? When he cut your ankle?”

“Yeah, do you know what that was?”

“Very much so. That was… that was Tuxedo Cat’s kwami, the black cat kwami of destruction. My friend.”

“The… one we are trying to rescue?”

“The very same. We usually don’t get to talk with each other when we are transformed, but he used a lot of energy to send me a special message.”

“A message? That’s what that was?”

“Yes,” Tikki’s eyes glimmer brightly, “A message of hope. Normally, we kwami protect our holders from nearly all harm when transformed, with only a few exceptions where other miraculous heroes are concerned. It’s something we don’t have to even think about because we naturally protect ourselves in the same way. But Tuxedo Cat’s kwami has made an incredible show of self-sacrifice, especially for him.”

 

* * *

 

“Oh yeah, boss,” Plagg croaks from Gabriel’s cravat, “There was one thing I did forget to mention when I gave you that whole spiel on my powers, since it has never really come up before. You are not immune to Cataclysm, and nor am I. Sorry.”

 

* * *

 

Nathalie pokes her head in Adrien’s room, the sound of his door interrupting his piano practice. He looks up and the echoes of Joplin peter off.

“Adrien, your father has fallen suddenly ill and will be at home for the next few days,” Nathalie says without betraying an ounce of emotion.

Adrien feels something like hope brim in his chest despite this strange announcement. Would Father actually make his presence known? Could they maybe finally have a day for themselves, the two of them? Adrien would be delighted to take anything he could get, even if it was just a bit of conversation while his father rests in bed. Especially because he still wants to discuss the idea of attending public school again, despite Gabriel’s cool deferral of it the last time Adrien had been able to broach the subject.

“Is there anything I can do for him? It’s not too serious, is it?”

Adrien hastily appends the second question for fear of coming off too eager.

“I don’t believe so. He hasn’t expressed interest in seeing a doctor, so I imagine he just plans to rest it off. I trust you to keep quiet and not disturb him.”

Adrien’s expression falls again, and Nathalie shuts the door. So much for that discussion.

It takes a few minutes, but a slower rendition of _The Entertainer_ resumes. It almost-- _almost_ \-- is enough to cover up the horrible wet coughs that migrate through the house. He prays it isn’t contagious and then has to pause and wonder if thinking that is too selfish.

 

* * *

 

Over the next two weeks, Marinette is hesitant to admit that she’s fallen into a sort of rhythm in her dances with disaster. It’s been a lot easier, since her adversary has been decidedly more hesitant with his cataclysm, even if he’s attacked more. Her key takeaways get stowed in a sort of extra-secret diary on her yo-yo, which apparently has several more uses than a means of transport or capture. An excerpt:

 

  * __Tikki reinforced my costume after my first fight. The whole stomach and more of my neck is now black, along with my feet, kind of like boots. All of the black spots are a bit more durable now. Tikki says there’s not much more she can do without sacrificing longevity and flexibility, but it definitely has helped so far.__


  * __The whole sleep schedule thing? Not working. I’m glad it’s still the beginning of the school year, but it’s already tough to find time to do assignments! I don’t have the time to be stepping out for a half hour and then coming back to calm myself down for another half hour. Not to mention I keep getting pulled out of class, and I have to make that stuff up too.__


  * _Speaking of getting pulled out of class, Ms. Bustier asked me if I was okay the other day. I kind of settled on a half truth about Tux and being really shaken up about the first incident, so she and the other teachers have mostly given me free license to go “calm down” whenever the school goes on lockdown or evacuates. Class rep perks? I feel a little bad abusing their trust like that, especially since I just got elected, but it’s close enough to the truth that it’s an easy ruse to keep. I can’t imagine constantly having to think up more excuses!_


  * _Tux hates being called “Tux”, apparently. I don’t know why he chose such a long name. Did he really think people weren’t going to shorten it? A few attacks have been really close calls, and he is not nice with those claws or that baton._


  * _He keeps going after buildings people are in, just to mess with me. I hate it, more than I can possibly say. I hate it._


  * _People are already trying to play the hero and attack him, despite me telling them on the news that they shouldn’t do that. I hate that, too._


  * _I think I was starting to take a lot of my frustration out on Tikki, so I’ve been trying to be nicer and not so cold around her. She’s been so sweet despite it all, and she doesn’t deserve that from me. Tikki, if you can read this, I’m sorry. I’m trying to be better so I can apologize to you in person, but I think I still need more time. I hope you’ll continue to be patient with me._



 

  
She drops inside her house discreetly and taps over the list to make a new entry, and lets her transformation run out naturally. She was supposed to be hanging out with _friends_ on a Friday night like this, but instead she changes into her pajamas and flops onto her bed to let out a few frustrated tears. She’s glad Tux gave her an opening to make him cataclysm himself on this one today. Especially since he almost slit her throat. The next attack was probably going to be rough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh whewie! A short one! I had to tie up a few loose ends so I hope the next chapter is a little more seamless of a transition; here's hoping that little timeskip recap thingy wasn't too jarring. Please understand how much I didn't want to have to write more fight scenes just for those scraps of information lol


	5. A Morning Encounter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adrien has been feeling isolated this whole time, really, but he finally gets the gumption to do something about it.

For Adrien, the two weeks in between find him growing restless. The bout of illness had come and gone much as Nathalie had forecasted, along with Adrien’s window of opportunity for getting Gabriel to give public school a fair shake. He couldn’t help but feel frustrated at his father’s reticence, and maybe a bit at himself for chickening out. Gabriel was a man who took matters into his own hands; it was how he ended up where he was. Perhaps, Adrien thinks, it’s time for him to take a page from that book. He sets about making preparations, discreet calls he anticipates nobody in his household will hear. Privacy, at least, had been provided to him in spades.

Finally, he awakens with a start to the sound of his phone vibrating on his nightstand next to him, immediately aware of the day and the calendar reminder he set for himself last night. Father has been sick the past few days again, and it’s now or never.

His hands shake as he brushes his teeth and even if he was at liberty to be getting breakfast from the kitchen, he can feel the way his stomach clenches in nerves well enough to know that today it was not an option. He keeps checking his phone for the time and watches the minutes crawl on as he sits on his pristinely made bed: knees bouncing, heart pounding, hands clammy. 

Honestly, it took the most amount of effort to dig out the supplies; the backpack had to be smuggled from its original purpose of keeping his street clothes during photoshoots, the notebooks dug out surreptitiously from an unloved supply closet in the office. Had father not been so preoccupied, he’d have felt like he was walking on eggshells. Nathalie was a big enough roadblock, but Adrien reasoned that she, at least, had the potential to be cajoled if he really,  _ really _ tried.

It really only took ten minutes to get there, but at 8:04 he realizes that sitting around was going to help nothing. Adrien dons the nondescript grey hoodie, musses his hair over his eyes, and draws the hood up to cover his face.

By 8:06 he has left the Agreste Mansion and is on his way to school. 

 

* * *

 

Marinette is awakened by a very loud rumble, roused from a somewhat peaceful slumber. She takes a very long minute to process that it is, in fact, a school day and that no, that crash did not come from downstairs. Sunlight streams through her window; not thunder either. The screams take another moment to hit her, but her blood runs cold when they do.

Terror grips her as Tikki flies out from under a pillow and nods sadly at her.

“It’s him.”

Marinette flings the covers aside and rockets down her loft steps, bare feet slapping on the planks and giving way to hurried creaking as she throws on an outfit and brushes her teeth. She spits the foam out and immediately gives Tikki the order to transform her. Ladybug, shaking, is hurtling toward the dust moments later.

She stops behind a chimney stack a block away to survey the area; there’s dust, of course, and rust and char. Bits of brick and glass coat the cars nearby and electricity snaps from the downed wires. The smoke of the collapsed building begins to tend toward an electrical fire as sirens start to wail in the distance. People are still yelling in the streets below, screaming for their neighbors in the remnants of their homes. Ladybug scans the area. She can’t find  _ him _ anywhere nearby, and drops to the street below to help lift away furniture and decor and appliances. They litter the block now that their buildings have turned to dust around them. 

There’s no use in looking for Tuxedo Cat. He’s probably long gone to recharge. In the meantime, there is a pile of rubble emanating muffled yells for her to contend with. Ladybug zips into the street below and amidst onlookers begins the delicate game of pulling what pieces she can with her yo-yo. As she falls into a rhythm, she remembers she still has to go to school after this. She’s already thinking of a new excuse to use on Mrs. Bustier for why she looks like she saw a ghost on the way to school. Of course, as her mind snaps back to the sound of a low groan of pain, she doesn’t suppose that excuse in itself would be too far off.

She gets absorbed in the work of hefting couches and stone and mattresses and manages to rescue a half dozen people in short order. She steps back to survey what point of the pile to attack next when she hears a scream and gets blindsided from the right. Ladybug lands hard in the street, Tuxedo Cat half on top of her, and he takes a brutal swipe at her side before she can kick him off. Ladybug cries out as she finally manages to connect her feet with his chest, sending him flying.

“That’s no way to greet a friend, little bug.”

“You’re no friend of mine,” she says as she stands again, wincing at the biting pain at her ribcage. 

“Oh, but it would be so easy to be! If you give me your miraculous, we could be the best of friends, you and I. We’d both get what we wanted. Me, your earrings, you, to be left alone.”

Tuxedo Cat begins to twirl his baton, and Ladybug unlatches her yo-yo at the same time he lunges for her. Tux connects the end of his baton with the ground where she stood a moment before, now having launched herself into the air.

“You and I both know that isn’t going to happen,” she calls from the air as she hooks another chimney, and he shoves his staff into the ground to vault and give chase.

 

* * *

 

Adrien re-ruffles his bangs over his eyes as he walks to school. There’s only so long before he’s found out, but if he can  _ just _ make it into the building, he’ll be safe. He’ll finally be at school. Hope brims in his heart at the idea of new classmates and the smell of old textbooks. 

 

* * *

 

A neighborhood over, Tuxedo Cat has caught up to his prey on a roof. Ladybug backs up, trying to hold her side while she makes up a plan, and bites back a swear when she feels her heel finally touch the brick chimney stack behind her. She presses the rest of her back into the cool stone, not yet heated by the morning sun.

“You’re wounded, bug, and you’re backed into a corner. Give me your miraculous and give up.”

“No.”

“Fine. Cataclysm.”

The dark aura bubbles to life at his hand, and he readies his baton to pin her to the wall before lunging. Ladybug notes the way he glides into the shadow of the chimney, his baton held like a javelin and, more importantly, how high his strides are taking him off the ground.

Her out.

She finally gives into her nerves and lets her legs give out underneath her. Tuxedo Cat misses his mark and instead cracks the brickwork laterally, glancing down just in time to see Ladybug slide between his legs on yo-yo. He turns to watch her path and like lightning, she whips the toy out again, cable zinging above him. 

“You’ll have to aim better than that if you want to win,” he sneers.

“No, actually, I won’t,” she grunts as she yanks the yo-yo string. 

Tuxedo Cat looks up just in time to see the chimney stack fall on him, and by the time he clears off the rubble with just one hand and the baton, she’s a smudge of red headed out of reach.

Ladybug lands in a back alley, hidden some in the shadows, and puffs an exhausted series of breaths into the air. Her side wound stings as she tries to regain control of her heart rate, and she cradles it as tears begin to form in her eyes from the pain. To nobody in particular, she muses that she’ll be late for school if she doesn’t end this now. 

Her energetic shout of “LUCKY CHA-” is cut off by the thud of a figure joining her in the alleyway.

“So,” the hulking shadow says as it draws back to full height, “You thought that trick back there was pretty clever, huh?”

The icy blue eyes behind the mask meet hers as he levels his still active Cataclysm at her.

“Well, it wasn’t.”

Tuxedo Cat launches himself at Ladybug, who is completely out of options.

 

* * *

 

Adrien is trying to keep his head down when he hears a faint and vaguely familiar voice.

“You thought that trick back there was pretty clever, huh?”

_ He’s been caught _ . 

He pulls his hood down to look for the source of his blown cover, and instead finds something terrifyingly bizarre in the alley he was just about to pass. Rimmed by the harsh morning sun, Tuxedo Cat-- in the flesh-- rises from a crouch. His right hand seems to be sucking darkness from the air itself. Cataclysm.

Adrien no longer needs to wonder if a human could be scarier than his father. His heart drops when his eyes also capture the blot of red trying to melt into the wall opposite Tuxedo Cat.

“Well, it wasn’t,” the imposing shadow utters, his muscles tensing in a way that Adrien recognizes from years of fencing.

Adrien doesn’t even need to think. He flings off the backpack and thanks his athletics for the ability to cover the distance between himself and Ladybug faster than Tuxedo Cat can.

“NO!” he screams, blindly throwing himself in front of Ladybug and expecting death to take him instead of her. If his death could buy her the few precious seconds she needed to keep saving Paris, he’d know that to be far more than he expected his life to amount to.

But after a long, frozen moment of silence and, to be perfectly honest, feeling no deader than before, Adrien opens his eyes.

Tuxedo Cat is gaping at him, and when Adrien looks down, he sees Tuxedo Cat’s darkness-coated claws just millimeters from the fabric of his hoodie.

_ He’s… he’s still alive? _

In the second it takes for him to look back up to a stricken Tuxedo Cat, he registers a whizzing sound going under him, and Tuxedo Cat’s fine suit sleeve has been snagged in hefty string at the forearm. He traces the line back behind him and sees Ladybug (she’s so much  _ smaller _ up close), clutching her side, tears in her eyes, and smirking. 

He immediately comprehends how  _ close _ he is to her and how incredible she looks, and watches as she deftly flicks the string to send her assailant’s hand back into his own face.

“ _ Gotcha _ ,” she murmurs, almost teasingly, and he can’t help but blush.

A sound almost like water in a hot pan starts to emanate from the dark, sunlight-framed figure of Tuxedo Cat, and a moment later, smoke begins to trail out from between his splayed fingers. His mouth draws into an unhappy grimace.

“Relying on a human shield? That’s a new low even for you,  _ insect _ . I’d better not see you do that again.”

He spits ichor on the ground and turns to leave, vanishing back onto the roof above without a trace of flair. Adrien finally turns around to regard Ladybug, slowly, as if she might also vanish the moment he looks directly at her.

He’s instead met by an accusatory finger being poked in his chest.

“ _ Speaking of _ ,” she starts, “What were you thinking?! Do you have any idea of what just happened? You could’ve been  _ killed _ ! I don’t know why you weren’t! I don’t need civilians trying to play hero; if you die there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to save you. I swear--”

A second female voice comes to his attention behind him. 

“Oh thank God there he is, ADRIEN!” 

It’s Nathalie, stepping out of the passenger seat of the driver’s car and rushing over.

Ladybug’s glare slides to her right along with Adrien’s gaze, before she emphatically pushes her index finger into his chest to get his attention back.

“I’ve seen your face on ads; don’t think you’re off the hook because you’re famous. I shouldn’t have to tell you not to go senselessly risking your life for others. You matter to someone. Don’t waste it.”

Nathalie finally makes it over to Adrien and turns him away from Ladybug, who slips her gloved finger off of his chest and starts down the alley before Nathalie bustles him back into the car. She’s more urgent than he’s ever seen her, and a bit of his frustration boils off into regret.

He didn’t want Ladybug to be right. It was his life. Let him use it as he saw fit. The weight of his failure to get to school sits with him as he stares at his backpack, placed innocently on the seat next to him. He thinks about his inefficacy the whole way home, instead of listening to Nathalie’s lecture.

Ladybug slumps against the alleyway on the other side, finally allowing her panic to dim and temporary relief to wash over her. This one was too close for comfort, and she looks at her now blood-covered left hand, driving that point home.

“Yikes, that’s a pretty bad one. Let’s get patched up, Tikki. Lucky Charm,” she says bluntly.

She opens her arms to receive the belated boon that flits down from the sky, only to find a small ladybug-spotted butterfly in her hands.

“A butterfly, huh? That’s a new one. Not sure what I would have done with you, though,” she says to the tiny creature.

All the same, she shouts “Miraculous Ladybug!” and sends the butterfly out to initiate the miraculous cure. She imagines the wave of red insects rebuilding the apartment complex and bringing the people back into their armchairs and bathrooms a bit confused, but no worse for the wear. Once the feeling of the cure going out leaves her, she zips toward school to find a safer spot to release her transformation. 

Unbeknownst to her, the man in the red Hawaiian shirt stares at the spot she departed. He strokes his beard thoughtfully before hobbling away, mumbling to himself about the butterfly and the boy.

 

* * *

What happens that evening in the Agreste household is… ugly. There’s no good word otherwise, and even within the perfect acoustics of his room, Adrien can hear the muffled screams of his father. He winces every time his voice hits a particularly emphatic word in one of the rooms below. He thinks he can hear something break more than once, and every so often he hears the yelling pause for a hacking cough he’s beginning to think is chronic. He doesn’t know where it comes from.

Eventually the words “incompetent” and “danger” cease their repetition, and Adrien wonders if he’s next. Cold worry had been building in his gut the whole day after Nathalie, still pale, escorted him to his room. A touch past noon, the “WHO LET HIM OUT” sent his anxiety into overdrive, his hot tears seeping into his pillowcase the closest facsimile of comfort.  _ “You did this,” _ his mind unhelpfully supplies until he no longer has the energy to sob. By the time he hears the knock at his door, he is resigned. He couldn’t drown it out in the end, inside or out. Father enters his room, and Adrien sits up at the edge of his bed in the dark.

“Adrien, we need to talk about your behavior today.”

Gabriel is the picture of calm, as though he hadn’t just spent the whole of the afternoon in a violent rage. Adrien almost wishes he could have the angry version of his father instead. At least it would seem like the man was still able to feel. The thought burns his throat, as though his body is reprimanding him for thinking such a thing.

“I’m very disappointed that you would disobey my wishes and sneak out of the house. No less, to go to public school when you have the finest tutors money can buy. It baffles me.”

Adrien grips at his jeans.

“Because of your transgression, I’ve had to re-evaluate the quality of our house staff and I will be doubling down on your schedule. Freedom is a privilege when we live in the public eye, Adrien, and the last thing we need is poor publicity. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Father,” Adrien says softly from the dark.

“Good. I’m sorry that things have come to this, but you must understand that your actions have consequences. Furthermore, it is of special danger for you to be going out unsupervised with that menace Tuxedo Cat running in the streets. I do not want to think about what would’ve happened had I lost you to him today. From this point forth, you are not to leave the grounds without my express permission. You will be closely supervised at your modeling shoots. If you show you can be trusted not to run off, we can re-evaluate your schedule in a few months. I expect you to be on your best behavior.”

“Yes, I understand. Thank you, Father.”

“Thank you, Adrien. That is all.”

Gabriel leaves Adrien, light from the hallway returning to Adrien’s room yet again. 

Adrien curls back into a ball on his bed, looks at the photo of him and Mom on his nightstand, and when the image blurs with tears, he flips the photo down. It isn’t the first time he’s cried himself to sleep.

It’s also not a terribly good sleep, either, as he awakens near midnight with a dry throat and a massive headache, the fabric of his day clothing feeling dirty and uncomfortable. He pads into the bathroom to shower and change into pajamas, and when he returns, he notices a pane of his bedroom window is ajar.

“Funny, I thought I had that shut this whole time.”

He’s about to press the remote to shut it again when he notices something on the sill. He goes over to inspect the item. Perhaps one of the cleaners forgot it; as he nears it to find out, the inky blob resolves itself into a shape he recognizes as a jewelry box. It looks beautiful and is definitely not his. Whomever’s it was must have been sorely missing it if the box itself was anything to go by. The six sides of it are black, and the top appears to be an intricate knot of orange woodwork. Adrien opens the box to investigate what sort of thing has been left here, and when he does, a flash of whitish light momentarily blinds him. When his eyes readjust to the darkness, in front of him floats… well. Something. A creature. It’s a pale purple, with a large, almost humanoid head and butterfly wings trailing out behind its tiny body.

The creature opens its eyes and smiles at him.

“Hello, young master,” it says in a soft voice, “You must be my new holder; I am Nooroo. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

_ “Surely,” _ Adrien thinks,  _ “This is a dream.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't realize I had actually like a couple more chapters typed up in sequence! I think I could have done with a good alpha read here but whatever. whatever  
> don't look too much or you'll find all the holes in the weaving, trying to get chronology out of ML is a goddamned nightmare and I've been doing mental gymnastics for months now about the timeline of this story lol
> 
> also for those of you who are inclined to pick the school enrollment paperwork thing apart because I know you're out there: If Adrien slides a few more pieces of paper into Nathalie's signature stack, she doesn't say anything


	6. The Butterfly and The Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adrien's new acquaintance has to get him up to speed on... a lot of things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, this is where I hit my next writing gap, and my schedule starts ramping up next week. This will probably be it for a while! I'm sorry if it takes me real and actual months to get the next chapter out, I have no sense of real world pacing... I probably have no sense of writing pacing either tho lol

Nooroo is not, in fact, a figment of Adrien’s imagination.

“I am what is called a kwami, a being born when a new concept is born. Things like creation, destruction, protection, and teamwork-- that’s mine-- all have a kwami associated with them. And we each have a tool, called a miraculous, that allows us to grant humans our power for a brief amount of time.”

Nooroo moves to hover next to the opened box, gesturing toward the object inside.

“This brooch is my miraculous. To borrow my power, you need only put it on and say the magic words.”

The flash of light moments ago prevented Adrien from looking at this item, but he now is able to look at it well: it’s a simple thing, with a deep purple jewel at its center, and it’s bordered by four delicate looking petals that radiate out and evoke a rather butterfly-looking shape. Adrien plucks it out of the box, and Nooroo continues explaining as Adrien tries to find a good place on him to pin it.

“My miraculous is a bit unusual; there are rules that govern the transformations that allow us to give you our powers, rules that govern when we kwamis may appear, and mine breaks many. You really are quite lucky, young master!”

Adrien finally settles on pinning the brooch on the chest of his nightshirt, and watches as its wings retract in a small pop of light, leaving behind a very nondescript deep purple stone.

“Most miraculouses must be worn at all times for the kwamis to be visible, but as long as you keep the brooch on your person and do not will me back into it, I will be able to stay out. If you lose my brooch, have it removed from you, or willingly give it up, I will go back into it again. Please don’t lose me, young master! I would like very much to work together with you. I’ve heard very good things about your kind spirit.”

Adrien hasn’t heard a compliment like that since his mom--

He starts to tear up.

“Oh, young master, I’m so-- did I say something wrong?” Nooroo frets.

“N-no. I’ve had a bad day-- no, a bad  _ year _ , and I think you might be the best thing to happen to me in a long time. I would love to work with you too, Nooroo.”

Nooroo looks a little unconvinced, but smiles up at Adrien.

“Wonderful. Let’s get some rest, I have much to teach you tomorrow.”

 

* * *

 

Adrien’s had his schedule completely wiped for the rest of the week due to his transgression, so it’s just as well that Nooroo appeared when he did.

He wasn’t kidding about having much to teach. The small kwami has a surprising amount to say for how soft-spoken he is; he prattles on at length about how Adrien must  _ never _ let anyone know his identity, how he must choose a hero name, how he must do this, and that, and Adrien accidentally finds himself nodding off. He means to pay attention, he really does. It’s very exciting in principle!

Nooroo nudges his shoulder.

“Please, young master, this is important and we haven’t much time! The reason I was called upon to be your kwami  _ now _ is because Ladybug needs your help. I have to get you up to speed as quickly as possible, oh, this normally takes  _ months _ but your foe is so dangerous--”

Adrien snaps awake at the mention of Ladybug. Helping Ladybug. Nooroo is equally surprised at the vibrant reaction.

“Why didn’t you mention Ladybug sooner?! What are we waiting for?! Wings--”

“Shh, young master! Wait!”

Adrien deflates slightly, but his mood is still running high.

“I can’t explain things if you just rush in and transform. I’ve only told you what a fraction of my powers do, and you can’t even activate them yet. By any chance, does your house have any spare rooms?”

“Plenty.”

“Ones that nobody ever visits?”

That was a little harder. The cleaners were quite thorough, but there was one space that came to mind that was--

“The attic,” Adrien voices after a pause, “Why?”

“You need a place to store a reserve of my power. May we go there?”

Adrien holds out his outer shirt questioningly in response, and Nooroo nods, going in it to hide. They depart his room. 

Typically, Adrien didn’t venture down this hall much, a spare bedroom and bathroom and linen closet the only other occupants besides the door to the attic. He shuts the door behind him and flicks the switch for the dim bulb that illuminates the stairway that leads to the trapdoor.

“We’re here,” Adrien announces as he lifts the hatch and enters the attic proper, and Nooroo flies out to investigate.

The space is open and smells rather musty; the boxes and other stored belongings have all been pushed to one wall, and a small area rug covers the center of the wood floor. This used to be his mom’s spot in the house; she would come up to read, maybe play piano, but the accumulated dust from the last several months tells him nobody has dared ventured up here since him. There’s a beautiful wide roundel of a window, a newer addition that had been put in when his mom took a shine to the room. At certain times of the year, the morning light it let in aligned almost perfectly with the rug.

“This will be perfect, young master! It’s time I tell you about Mitama generation.”

Adrien, luckily, was still mostly paying attention when the subject of Mitamas came up. Nooroo had described them as vessels for transmitting his powers to a host. They would reside in an item important to the individual, transforming them until Adrien called them back or unless the item was destroyed. 

“I will not be able to explain any further after you transform, so please listen closely now. Mitamas are made of a piece of your soul, much like how a composer’s score contains a piece of their soul. This is what allows them to home on both the intended recipient of your power, and you whenever you wish to call them back. They can be a bit finicky to make, which makes it very difficult to create them in a tense situation when you need them most. This is why I am having you make them in advance. I will have you practice today by making fifty, but it is my hope that over the coming days you will be able to produce several hundred-”

“That many?! What do I need them all for?” Adrien interrupts.

“Things happen, and it never hurts to have a reserve of power. You may someday find they have other uses, too. ...Regardless, it’s good practice in case sometime down the road you  _ do _ need to make them at a moment’s notice. Now, in order to make a Mitama, you must imbue it with positive energy. When you transform, cup your hands as such,” Nooroo clasps his tiny paws into a ball, but the gesture doesn’t work as well as it would with human hands, “and think of a good memory. Channel the energy into your hands. Feel the air between your palms shift, and when you feel a fluttering sensation, open your hands. Understood?”

Adrien looks hesitant, thoughtful. 

“Do mitamas need to be fed?”

Nooroo’s eyes crinkle as he smiles and tries to stifle a laugh.

“No, Adrien. They are constructs tied to your essence. So long as you persist as the holder of the Butterfly Miraculous, so will they. Are you ready?”

Adrien nods resolutely at Nooroo.

“Nooroo, wings up!”

 

Adrien, for all of Nooroo’s explanations, really wasn’t prepared for this.

The sensation is… odd. There’s something urgent about the feeling that tugs at his heart as energy shoots across his body, layers and layers of feelings of confidence, of fear, of power stacked like mille-feuille in the air around him. But the feeling is gone in an instant, and he’s left feeling like the edges of his vision are a little bit  _ off _ . Trails of color wiggle at his periphery and he has to blink several times to reorient himself and hope that he’s not experiencing the beginnings of a migraine. When, after a few seconds of blinking, no other symptoms arise and the colors clear slightly, he makes his way over to a cloth-covered mirror in the corner and tears off the fabric.

He lets out an involuntary gasp.

His normal wear has been replaced with a distinguished-looking three piece suit, perfectly tailored like a second skin. The ensemble is several different shades; the suit jacket is a stunning solid purple, the color somewhere between vibrant and muted, and it is accented with notched lapels that are a silky jet black. Two pointed coattails hang behind charcoal pants that end at fine black dress shoes. The dress shirt underneath the jacket is a blinding white, with a high banded collar closed at the top; just below it sits the brooch, now back in the form Adrien originally saw it in. His hands are covered in gloves and his face in a steely, greyish-purple mask.

He’d been having some trouble coming up with a good hero name and ended up pushing the thought out of his mind, deciding to let this moment have the final say, when he could see himself.

_ Greyling. _

Subtle, yet honest in some way.

Greyling nods once, his reflection bobbing its head in a returned greeting and causing the unruly bit of hair he could never get to settle (now split into two strands, somehow) to bounce. 

Time to make a mitama. 

He heads back to the center of the room and falters; he’s ashamed to admit no good memories are immediately coming to mind. 

Maybe if he got comfortable…?

His mother had left a high-backed plush chair up here, so he sprawls himself across it like an errant prince and is immediately jabbed in the hip by something he hadn’t noticed before: a cane attached to his left side. Why on Earth would he need a cane? He unlatches it to inspect it, briefly distracted by the throb of the receding pain. It’s perfectly fitted to him, like everything else, and a sleek black. Atop it is a sort of bulb that looks almost like a chamber as he twists it in the light, throwing strange shadows across the webwork of lines that separate a material that looks like stained glass. Viewed head on, it looks almost like a butterfly motif. As he twists it, he notices that it has an incredibly nice weight to it, the same type of balance he expects out of a good fencing saber. Odd. Maybe one was supposed to beat baddies over the head with it? 

He chuckles a little at the thought of knocking Tuxedo Cat across the head with a cane, and sets it down in his lap. 

Okay. Mitama.

Greyling shakes out his arms, even though the suit sleeves haven’t shifted uncomfortably, and cups his hands together like Nooroo demonstrated. Good memory.

It was hard to do on the spot, summoning something nice. Like being in a field of bunny rabbits and having them all run away as soon as he went for one. 

He tries focusing the energy in his hands preemptively and heaves a sigh when nothing happens.

The chair smells like Mom. The scent of her favorite perfume tickles his nose and he smiles idly. Sometimes when he was small he’d curl up in her lap here and fall asleep while she read--

An insistent flapping from his hands jolts him from his thoughts, and he opens them up. A butterfly, pure white and faintly glowing, settles and flicks its wings as it adjusts to no longer being confined, but it doesn’t fly away. Nooroo said it was a construct, and as he holds it in his hands, he almost finds it harder and harder to believe.

“Oh, hello!” he greets it quietly, afraid he’ll scare it away. It’s a lot bolder than a normal butterfly, though, and he feels a strange connection to it as it turns to face him, opening and closing its wings once. He wants to sit there and admire it, the manifestation of his memory, and it flits up as he adjusts his hand so that it may perch instead on his outstretched index finger.

It’s perfectly formed, but it flies off whenever he tries to move his index finger closer to his face. It flaps around some, making a few tight spirals before settling at the top of the armchair, again opening and closing its wings.

_ “That’s not too hard,” _ Greyling thinks to himself,  _ “Maybe I should just let my mind wander.” _

So he reminisces about his mom. Sometimes, he forgets to cup his hands, or put energy into it, but he manages to generate about 30 butterflies in the span of a half hour. They don’t seem interested in going far from the chair, and begin to crowd the space along the top, the armrests, even his cane and a couple on him. Then his stomach growls, and they disperse, impossible to hide against the dimly lit room.

Greyling realizes he is suddenly  _ famished. _

“Wings down,” he says like Nooroo told him, and the kwami in question spirals out of the brooch and into the air as the magic recedes from Adrien’s body.

“Whew!” Nooroo says to himself, before looking back at Adrien, still sprawled in the chair and watching him. “Excellent job, young master. Let’s take a quick break. I’m quite hungry!”

Adrien’s nose crinkles as he smiles. “You eat?”

“Yes, I have to recharge my energy somehow. Do you happen to have marshmallows? They’re a lovely delicacy.”

“I’ll see what I can find.”

Nooroo tucks himself back in Adrien’s shirt so that they can go downstairs. As Adrien descends the staircase, the butterflies flit about the room. He turns back and fixes one sitting in his vision with a stern look.

“Stay,” he commands, pointing, and shuts the trap door.

 

Downstairs, Adrien rummages through the kitchen cabinets to look for Nooroo’s request. It’s a bit of an odd one to him… why marshmallows of all things? He begins wondering if other sweets might be okay, but in the far back of the pantry he finally stumbles on what he’s looking for and pulls it out.

“These are probably ancient, are you sure they’re okay? I’ll have to have the shopper… if she didn’t get fired, I guess… have her go out and start getting us more,” He says, handing the half-full bag to Nooroo, which he eagerly accepts despite it being four times his size.

Adrien turns to look for some food for himself, refocusing at the front of the pantry. A lot of the food was pretty boring because that’s what his father tended to have bought for him, but Adrien always inhaled the junk food that got purchased too quickly anyway. This time, at least, he manages to find a bag of chips he’d left for himself earlier. Nice.

He turns around to ask Nooroo a question, only to find the bag an eighth full and Nooroo popping another marshmallow into his mouth.

“Wha-- um when… when is the last time you  _ ate? _ ”

“Oh,” Nooroo says around a mouthful of food before unceremoniously swallowing. There is no sign of the marshmallow any longer and Adrien gapes.

“Summer...”

“Wh-- okay, I--”

“1997.”

“ _ What?! _ ”

“Summer 1997.”

“It’s  _ 2015! _ ”

“Ah, yes. Time really  _ does _ move faster when I don’t have a holder.”

Adrien just closes his mouth, a perplexed frown gracing it instead.

 

* * *

 

The rest of the day passes with no incident. Adrien finishes a couple dozen more mitamas after a nice reminisce over his family before… well, before his mom went missing. It’s therapeutic, in a way, knowing the memories were still there, that his manifesting of the mitamas from them was proof of it. Even if he’s not quite sure where he’s going to come up with several hundred more.

That night as Adrien settles in for bed, Nooroo praises him for his hard work.

“It didn’t feel like I did all that much though.”

“You did a lot more than you might think, young master. And tomorrow you will do even more.”

Adrien wonders if he’s allowed to make Mitamas out of the nice things Nooroo says to him.

 

* * *

 

Adrien sleeps like the dead, a comfortable dreamless sleep as though he already used the fuel available to him during the prior day.

The next morning he awakens to his alarm, groans, and rolls over to come face to face with Nooroo, staring him down intently.

“Young master,” Nooroo says, causing Adrien to wince.

“Mmh, no…”

“I can’t let you sleep in, we have much to do.”

“Not that... “ his eyes open, “Not your master.”

“Young ma--?”

“No. Please. Please don’t call me that.”

Nooroo’s eyebrows raise.

“Oh. As you wish y... Adrien.”

Adrien smiles, his eyelids drooping.

“Thank you,” he says, turning his face fully into his pillow, pausing to sigh, and then hefting himself up on his forearms.

“So. What’re we doing today?”

Nooroo’s expression turns serious. “You need to learn how to find an appropriate champion.”

 

Nooroo explains, as Adrien brushes his teeth, the incredible importance of picking a champion. Of sensing emotions. 

“You mean all the squiggly auras yesterday?”

“Those precisely. As you become more in tune with your powers you will be able to better discern them in those you come in contact with. Unfortunately, this does put you at a disadvantage at the beginning, but with practice you will learn. You also must possess the ability to understand the heart of the person you choose, address the root of their issues, and convince them that you can help them.”

“So I’m basically a superpowers salesman?” Adrien grins.

“They call me…  _ Business Man! _ ” he punches a hand through the air valiantly.

Nooroo looks at him for a long second before dragging a paw down his face.

“Adrien, please. This is  _ serious _ . Lives are at stake.”

Adrien deflates considerably, lowering his fist guiltily.

“Okay, so… what am I looking for in a candidate, then?”

“Despair.”

“Despair?”  
“Yes. It’s usually the easiest to work with and it has a very distinct aura. People will be a lot more likely to believe you if they believe everything else is hopeless.”

“That… seems kind of manipulative.”

“In the wrong hands, yes. That’s part of why this is so serious. You ultimately have to leave the choice to your candidate. Give them the option to refuse, but give them a good argument that you can help them for the better. And  _ don’t _ make empty promises.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've written this _incredibly_ out of order, so you don't actually get to yet see a lot of the work I put into it. There are certain points that are going to be a pretty long wait for chapters, especially since this is not a front burner project. (I am in the process of going to grad school!) I hope you'll bear with me and enjoy the ride!


End file.
